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OpenSignal has just published their findings on the current state of mobile networks in the USA, using over five million measurements from over a hundred and fifty thousand phones between April and June of this year. T-Mobile in particular saw some impressive results, scoring the highest of all carriers nationwide in each of OpenSignal's six critical metrics:

To see how carriers performed regionally read the report in full at the link below. And remember, if you disagree with any of these results you can make the next test more accurate by installing the OpenSignal app for Android or iOS.

Three years ago this month I road-tested my first smartwatch, the first Android Wear wearable from LG. I bought it on a whim, sight unseen, immediately after watching the webcast of the live keynote for the launch of Android Wear. On a similar whim some six months later I bought an original Pebble on clearance at my local Best Buy. I stuck with that through the launch of the Pebble Time in mid-2015, gave up for a while, came back to the superior Pebble Time Steel and remained a loyal Pebbler until the sale of assets to Fitbit last December. Then I returned to Android Wear, but only devices made by traditional watchmakers. And now, thanks to Gadgetbridge, I find myself reunited with my collection of Pebbles.

I've never owned an Apple Watch or a Fitbit, but thanks to Howard I did get to spend a weekend with an original Galaxy Gear way back in the winter of 2013. All this is only to say that I know a thing or two about the device category. So here's what I think of it, three years on.
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Photos of Samsung's Galaxy Note8 that surfaced on Facebook in mid-July have been corroborated by Evan Blass, the most trusted leaker out there. He tweeted the photo above at 3:30am Eastern Time last night, confirming that this year's iteration of Samsung's famous phablet will be its first phone with a dual camera setup. And unfortunately, like the S8 and S8 Plus, the fingerprint reader will be almost directly beside it.

Samsung's Galaxy Active line seems to be quite popular with Android users, enough so that unlocked versions of the exclusive-to-AT&T devices are readily available on Amazon and eBay. And it's pretty easy to see why: who wouldn't want a flagship smartphone with a bigger battery and more durable casing?

A ruggedized version of this year's Galaxy S8 was inevitable, and we now have an early look via a leaked training manual to Android Police. The specs:

The older version of Android may disappoint some, and here's something likely to annoy everyone: the formerly-reprogrammable "active" button will now only launch Bixby.

The Galaxy S8 Active is expected to be available in two colors, Meteor Gray and Titanium Gold (American spelling deliberate for our friends on AT&T). The price has yet to be confirmed, but the phone's launch is imminent, possibly as early as August 1st.

Evidence of Nokia's comeback as an Android OEM continues, with a new report of some 500 design patents transferred back to the company from the former owner of its smartphone business. The most recognizable of the bunch would have to be the user interface from the Lumia camera app, seen above.

The trademarks associated with the app—PureView, PureMotion, etc.—remain the intellectual property of Microsoft Mobile Oy; the patents, however, were apparently triggered by the sale of some other assets by Microsoft to a third party last year. This leaves Microsoft's mobile business with about 200 design patents remaining. Sure would be a shame for those to go to waste.

With the Lumia camera UI back under the Nokia banner and the renewed partnership with Carl Zeiss, Inc., the Nokia 8 that's due next month might give this year's Pixel some stiff competition in the camera department!

iMessage is the one thing that Apple fans can rightly gloat about—nothing beats the convenience of having your SMS reach you on whatever iDevice you happen to be using. With its Chrome browser extension Pulse SMS can give Android users the same convenience, along with AirDroid, MightyText, Pushbullet, etc. But for those Chrome users seeking native SMS support there is some potentially good news on the way.

Chrome Unboxed received a screenshot from a reader with a Samsung Chromebook Plus, showing a new field in the Settings menu called Connected Devices, and a toggle labeled SMS Connect. It doesn't actually do anything at the moment, but you can supposedly see the menu item on your own Chromebook by enabling developer mode and searching

Remember that enabling developer mode will wipe all local data from your machine—which is why I'm unable to test this for you on my girlfriend's Chromebook.

Hopefully an update is on the way that will activate this feature, at least so that users in the developer channel can test it. Perhaps one day soon all Android users will be able to enjoy native SMS functionality through their Chrome desktop browsers—and that iMessage envy won't be quite so bad.

Last week I wrote about issues that some Pebble users are having with their Android app, hammering Pebble's servers and in so doing killing their phone's battery. Fitbit has promised to support Pebblers only through to the end of 2017, but with their own proper smartwatch on the way it seems inevitable that Pebble servers will one day be powered down.

Fortunately, if you're an Android user, there's an app for that: it's called Gadgetbridge. Available via F-Droid, it also supports Mi Band and Zeblaze fitness trackers. For Pebble it will give your watch 85% of the functionality it had with the companion Pebble app, and zero dependence on Pebble's servers.

Let's have a look!

This is the app's control center, where you'll see all your connected devices (I just have the one). The grey icons along the bottom row are, from left to right, your watch's battery level, a screenshot utility, your installed apps and watchfaces, your fitness data (stored locally on your phone) and another utility to buzz your watch if you've lost it.

Here's a list of the watchfaces I have installed on my Pebble. Gadgetbridge has no direct connection to Pebble's app store, but you can use any web browser to download your desired face (or app) to your phone, and then install it locally from there. Just follow the instructions on the Gadgetbridge wiki here.

So here's something I didn't know; the configuration page for watchface settings are actually remote web pages maintained by developers—GitHub in the example above. To protect you from malicious sites Gadgetbridge will show you the URL of the configuration site rather than taking you there directly.

Once you've configured your watchface Gadgetbridge will show you a preview of your settings before sending them on to your watch, presumably to protect you from malicious code. I don't have a problem with this.

Pebble and its community have done a fantastic job of making software available for the now-unsupported hardware. If and when the app store goes offline, no matter; someone on reddit is sharing their entire download of it. Likewise, there's no need to worry if your Pebble goes down; you can reinstall your watch firmware via Gadgetbridge, and links to the latest versions are available on their wiki.

In terms of functionality it's easier to tell you what doesn't work rather than what still does. Switching to Gadgetbridge will basically remove the option of using your voice with your Pebble. You won't be able to initiate text messages but you can reply to them from your watch with your own canned responses, entered via the phone app. Gadgetbridge is very serious about protecting you, and as a policy will not allow any app or watchface to connect to the Internet directly; as a result apps like TripAdvisor and Yelp will be quite useless. If you use a watchface with a weather complication there is a fairly ugly hack that works for only a few faces, but will at least provide weather data for the native weather app on Pebble OS.

For me the choice was obvious: have the official Pebble Android app continue to murder my phone's battery or give up some features and use Gadgetbridge instead. I should point out that I also own three Android Wear watches, and yet even with the reduced functionality it's still the Pebble that most often ends up on my wrist!

It's not the first Xiaomi phone to support American and Canadian LTE bands (that honour would, I think, go to the Mi 5S Plus) but the Mi Note 2 is Xiaomi's first global phone to get an extensive review by the western tech press—XDA, to be exact. Unfortunately the phone is not officially sold here; the review unit was provided by GearBest, a grey market importer based in Hong Kong.

I'll provide a few highlights here, but if you're interested in this device or in Xiaomi products in general you should definitely check out the source.

The Mi Note 2 runs MIUI 8, based on Android Marshmallow. This will likely be the most polarizing feature of the phone. Unfortunately Xiaomi doesn't have the best track record at releasing kernel sources, so if you wanted a device for custom ROMs you'd be better of with the Mi 5S Plus—which at least is supported by Lineage OS.

Note that because this version of the phone originates from Hong Kong it will ship with both Google Play and Mi Services on board.

Why You Should Care

It's inevitable that Xiaomi will one day sell unlocked phones in North America; there's already a trickle of devices and accessories from third-party sellers on Amazon. The company's growing portfolio of products will hopefully spur other smartphone OEMs to up their game. The North American market doesn't need another $1,000 phone, but it could certainly use some competition at the $500 price point.

This chart says it all, really. And according to Forrester Research (shared by Recode), the world's already-meager market share of tablets has actually started to decline. Why? Phablets, probably...

There was a time when, for me, a 7 inch tablet was a great companion to a 5 inch phone with a small-ish battery—indeed, a pair of Nexus 5s and 7s were essential travel gear for the girlfriend and I in 2013 and 2014. But in the years since bigger phone batteries and screens have seen our tablets stay at home. I still use one around the house but it's definitely a luxury, and not something I plan on upgrading anytime soon.

Forrester's research asserts that the (relative) popularity of tablets in developed markets is only because phone screens, in aggregate, are still on the small side here. That's expected to change, though, as larger screens become the norm.

Unfortunately it looks like Steve Jobs' vision of the iPad as the world's dominant post-PC computer hasn't really come to pass.

XDA has posted a nice essay on how various Android OEMs have let down their customers so far this year. We'll start with the story described above.

Ads in HTC's Keyboard

XDA actually doesn't have the entire story here; for that we can thank Android Police. What happened is that HTC licensed a third-party keyboard called TouchPal for some of their devices. TouchPal makes money by charging their users an annual subscription fee, without which you'd probably end up seeing ads on your keyboard at some point. I'm fairly certain that neither HTC nor TouchPal ever intended these ads to appear on licensed-to-HTC keyboards; it's likely just a matter of a software update being pushed out to the wrong channel.

Motorola's Shrinking Battery

It's not just Motorola that's guilty of this, but XDA rightly points an accusing finger at them for replacing the 3,510 mAh battery on the Z Play with a significantly smaller 3,000 mAh battery on the Z2 Play—entirely missing the point of what made the old model so successful. Is there seriously anyone reading this who would rather have an impossibly-thin phone than one with a decent-sized battery?

OnePlus 5's Upside-Down Display

Apparently other OEMs are also guilty of this, but XDA didn't explicitly mention which ones. Suffice to say that the Shenzhen startup's 2017 flagship killer will forever be known as the one with the upside-down screen. And in case you were wondering, it was indeed a deliberate design choice!

Samsung's Bixby Button

I suppose you can't fault Samsung for pushing its own "AI" assistant, but you most certainly can fault them for dedicating a hardware button to it on their Galaxy S8 models, and actively blocking the remapping of said button to another function. The Verge goes so far as to call it hardware bloat; haven't heard that one before!